We have a 14 month old black female shepherd. Working class lines, beautiful and smart girl, but she was unfortunately in a bad situation from age 2-6 months. Her breeder had her at an out-of-state trainer that used to be good but changed ownership and the poor puppy was stuck in a run and ignored - - basically forced to potty in her "house" (ugh, bad habits!!).

We are now struggling to re-train her. Pee was easy - - I caught her the first time in the act, yelled NO!!!! and rushed her outside and praised her when she peed out there. Never did it again. Poop ... not so easy. About 15 different times she's pooped in her crate when we were asleep or at work. Some of the times she had only been in there for 3-4 hours before it happened. And then she spread it everywhere ... I mean a solid coating on herself and the entire inside of the crate. Not pretty. We didn't catch her in the act so we couldn't correct her.

She has also on 3 occasions pooped in the middle of the night in our bedroom (mostly diarrhea). We are *right* there and I sleep extremely lightly, so if she had whined even once I would have woken up to let her out. Each time we've cleaned the floor thoroughly (it's hardwood, no carpets thank goodness), and it's been in a different place all 3 times so it's not as though she's returning to "the scene of the crime". How do we stop this?? At first I thought we should crate her, but that was much worse because she pooped in there much more often than she did when sleeping loose in our bedroom.

We praise her when she goes outside so she knows she's a good girl when she does that, but that doesn't seem to translate to her knowing that she's a bad girl when she goes inside the house or her crate. Agh!!